


Electra Heart

by crankyoldman



Category: Before Crisis: Final Fantasy VII, Compilation of Final Fantasy VII, Final Fantasy VI, Final Fantasy VII, Final Fantasy VIII
Genre: F/M, Gen, Minor Violence, Nonbinary Character, Other, Women Being Awesome
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2012-07-10
Updated: 2014-08-05
Packaged: 2017-11-09 14:10:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 3,905
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/456371
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/crankyoldman/pseuds/crankyoldman
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Various explorations of different female FF characters. Complicated messy human beings.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Bubblegum Bitch

**Author's Note:**

> I basically just got the album "Electra Heart" by Marina and the Diamonds and decided I had to write a lot of lady stories inspired by the songs. Because reasons.

_Got a figure like a pin-up, got a figure like a doll  
Don't care if you think I'm dumb, I don't care at all  
Candy vest, sweetie pie, wanna be adored  
I'm the girl you die for_

\---

Scarlet was exactly fifteen when she realized that nice girls finished last. 

It wasn't anyone's fault really that the world was going to fuck her over if she didn't learn to cheat. Maybe it was inherent to the female condition to be at an immediate handicap, to have the rules be so unfair. 

But she hadn't cried about it. Merely took the needle out of her mother's arm and tossed it in the trash. She wasn't really even mad about what her mother had done to herself; her mother was a little too weak to handle life under the Plate anyway. She was just one of those women that were used up by the world, because they didn't know to seize what they could. She was just too _nice_.

And Scarlet wasn't going to do that at all. If men wanted her in the way they had always wanted her mother she was certainly going to use _them_.

\---

Her precise status as jailbait and her developing figure had opened up a few doors. Sure she was only doing secretarial work and had to give this entirely gross man a handjob, but she was at least closer to the open air. Scarlet could almost pretend that she didn't have to go back to her filthy room in Sector 7 at the end of the day.

"Can you file these plans?"

And while they ordered her around and talked down to her, she was going to stay later into the night, figuring out the intricate plans for the various mechanical things the firm made. Most of them were useless toys for people with too much money to know what to do with themselves. But she was fascinated by design of them, how it could go from a rough sketch to a more complicated schematic which communicated a final product.

"Yes, hand them over, sir."

If she batted her eyelashes and giggled it was only so they wouldn't know the hours during the night she spent pouring over used textbooks, figuring out how to make sense out of the lines and numbers.

\---

"Do you know what department you'd like to apply for?"

"I had read that Shinra was getting into weapons, it sounds like a very dynamic division."

She wasn't a college student by any means--like she could afford the time and money to sit in a classroom and listen to some old geezer explain things she'd worked hard to learn on her own--but that didn't mean that she couldn't sneak into their job fairs and get interviews like the rest of them.

Well maybe her skirt was just a couple inches shorter than those college educated hopefuls, maybe that had helped her to talk to the bland recruiter from the Shinra Electric Company. Uncrossing and recrossing her legs had made him drop his pen, after all.

"It's highly competitive, even amongst administrative assistants."

"Oh, I can handle competition."

\---

She methodically deleted the mechanic's number off of her phone. Scarlet had spent nearly all of her bonus on clothes and accessories, but it was a great investment. After all, how many secretaries had made it to weapon design?

She decided to delete a few more numbers off her phone. Was it burning bridges for ill or survival? Well, it had worked so far. And even though the office she currently waited in wasn't hers yet, she imagined it would be some day. Middle management wasn't too far off, after all. And did she like the view from the window, so easy to forget what an awful place Midgar was from so high up.

"Oh my Scarlet that's..."

"You like what I'm wearing?"

It was only a matter of time and enough weak men in higher positions before she was standing over them.

\---

_I chew you up and I spit you out  
'Cause that's what your love is all about  
So pull me closer and kiss me hard  
I'm gonna pop your bubblegum heart_


	2. Primadonna

Julia Heartilly was a star.

It was amazing how she shed her skin of shyness; almost so quickly she'd wondered if it was there to begin with. The smiles when she came into restaurants, the screams of her fans when her car pulled up to venues, all the beautiful pianos waiting for her when she did shows.

She'd never wanted for anything as a child as far as material things went, and now, now that she was a star, had that been what she was missing? Did she love the spotlight because it loved her back?

"Phone, Julia dear."

And Fury. His face had fallen a bit when she had turned down taking his name when they got married, but Heartilly just sounded better than Caraway for a singer/songwriter. 

Did she love him because he loved her enough for both of them, she merely a reflection of what he projected?

"Thank you."

But there was another show, and her thoughts were lost in her agents' words. 

\---

She had kept romantic notions about finding that soldier again, that he'd hear her on the radio singing about him. But Julia had forgotten his name halfway through the tour, and when the interviewers had asked about her inspiration, she'd imposed his eyes on her husband's face and told fairy stories.

Julia Heartilly wanted to stay in the starlight as long as possible, even if she turned herself into a fiction.

"Do you have any idea what your next single will be about? Are there plans for an album?"

She smiled demurely in the way that made the public sigh and rubbed her stomach. "My daughter."

\---

Little Rinoa loved the attention as much as she did. Once she was able to walk she would toddle into studio that Fury had given her for their first anniversary and babble at her until she invited her up onto the piano bench with her. Even if she was too small to take to shows because of the noise it was as if she knew what her mother did at the piano was a magnet of love.

"You're much harder to write about, little one."

Rinoa was much to young to know what she did on the dark days, when she couldn't get out of bed. Fury did a good job of keeping her away and closing the curtains so she could lay in the dark.

"Because you aren't really a person yet, are you? Just a little start of one. Writing about you is really writing about myself."

Rinoa rested her head on her side and Julia lightly touched the piano keys.

"But I'm going to share a secret with you, and only you. This is the type of song I will only sing for you. Something I wrote before you came along."

_Primadonna girl,  
Would you do anything for me?  
Buy a big diamond ring for me?  
Would you get down on your knees for me?  
Pop the pretty question right now baby  
Beauty queen of the silver screen  
I'm living life like I'm in a dream  
I know I've got a big ego  
I really don't know why it's such a big deal, though  
I'm sad to the core, core, core  
Everything is a chore, chore, chore  
When you give I want more, more, more  
I wanna be adored_

Even with the husband, the fame, and the beautiful girl-child, Julia would always want more. Maybe it was a sickness, maybe it was the evolution of all pretty girls, but she knew one thing for sure.

No one could ever really know.


	3. Lies

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I named Veld's unnamed wife Laura after a film noir film of the same name that I liked which is kind of meta for how I write Veld. XD

_You're too proud to say that you've made a mistake  
You're a coward to the end  
I don't wanna admit, but we're not gonna fit  
No, I'm not the type that you like  
Why don't we just pretend?_

\---

It takes a certain kind of training in mental gymnastics in order to stay married to a liar.

Laura hadn't signed up for this. In fact, until she'd met Veld she hadn't really entertained the idea of marriage at all. She was going to get out of her crappy journalist job in Kalm and make it to Midgar for the big time. Of course, it wasn't like she'd had a plan, and as the years in the small town had stretched out, she saw her options dwindling.

In a lot of ways, she'd needed Veld to enter her life, and break the tedium. He was everything that Kalm was not, and he'd hinted at places that he'd been that she'd only read about. And he had apparently grown up here too, though they'd never met before due to life's ironies.

He was _perfect_. Which should have been a warning sign to anyone with half a brain. Teachers had always said she was so smart, she was going to get far. 

"Veld, where have you been?"

Instead she was waiting up on a husband that would sometimes disappear in the middle of the night without warning. Who still worked in Midgar despite living in Kalm. Who sometimes seemed to confuse her for someone on the rare occasions she caught him off guard.

"I went for a walk."

"At two am? And do I smell liquor?"

It had been such a good day too. A crisp October day where they went to an orchard and Felicia had tossed apples at Veld and it had been _a good day_. He was there and they were a family and she didn't feel their collective personal regrets piled up between them.

"There are difficult things from my past, Laura, which I don't want to burden you with."

"Maybe I want to be burdened. I feel like I hardly know who you are! We've been married for seven years, Veld. I've never met your parents. Or your friends. Just you. Like you are the loneliest man on the planet or someone that just dropped out of the sky."

When the silence stretched on for more than five minutes she went into the bedroom and slammed the door. He would get the hint, and she hoped she didn't wake Felicia up. He wouldn't talk to her, and it was no use trying to get it out of him. Maybe if she'd been a reporter in the city she would have the investigative chops to find out just who the hell her husband was. 

But no, she wanted to believe he was what he said. Just a businessman from Midgar, grew up in Kalm though she'd never seen him before. Educated, well-dressed, incredibly charming.

Laura had seen things; the firearm he kept for "protection" in the office, the occasional spot or two of blood in his laundry, the strange tattoo on his arms, his odd scars, and the lack of any pictures of him before they had met. She wasn't stupid.

Just lying to herself.


	4. Valley of the Dolls

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yes I'm going out of order on the track listing, but I have a lot of feelings about Lucrecia. XD

_Born with a void, hard to destroy with love or hope  
Built with a heart, broken from the start  
And now I die slow_

She was getting to the point where she had to wonder why her undeath was probably the worst out of them. Lucrecia couldn't divorce logic from emotion; it had never been her strong suit. She _knew_ that she had done some wrong, but... why was she alone here? Why hadn't she died properly? 

She couldn't even dream. Or breathe. Or cry.

Maybe if she believed in religions like Ifalna had she might have some reason for this. Maybe she was supposed to be a seer for adventurers, they would come seek her out in this cave and she would bestow all knowledge upon them. Lucrecia would tell them the truth, _the truth_ and they would do better for the world.

Wouldn't they?

_In the valley of the dolls, we sleep  
Got a hole inside of me  
Living with identities  
That do not belong to me_

When time truly became meaningless she played thought exercises. Memories could be played out in crystals like she was really there. And she'd always had an analytical eye.

There was Lu The Seductress, tempting mentally unbalanced young men with daddy issues. See how high her heels, how long her partially bare legs? And Lucy The Girl, worrying her pretty little head over men's work. There she goes again, crying in the bathroom after class. And of course Dr. Crescent The Harpy, the insufferable wench, getting in the way of good work because of a silly affection for a clump of cells. How dare she think of the future as actually _helping?_

Her visions became edged with the purple tone of hysteria, and she wished for some kind of physiological response to ground her. 

But in a crystal cave there were only reflections, and undeath provided her with nothing more than time. If she didn't know, _know_ in the deepest fragment of her being that she had been someone, something before all this, she might believe the reflections were all she was. But none of them were Lucrecia the woman, the scientist, the almost-mother. None of them dissected lizards after her mother died in order to understand life, none of them hummed songs off-key in the apartment with her best friend when she first came to Midgar, and none of them stashed away secret hopes that her child would thrive out there and grind the world under his boot instead of letting it grind him down.

She knew, and if anyone came upon her here, they could see what they wanted to see. But _she_ was still here.

_Back to zero, here we go again, again  
Racing down into oblivion  
Back to zero, here we go  
I can feel it coming to the end  
The end_

"Lucrecia?!"

Oh of course, _he_ was there. It had to be _him_. At least his outsides look more like what he was like on the inside.

"Stay back!"

The reflections only worked at a distance. She was standing in a ruined wedding dress--of course he thought that. Sometimes his delusions were strong enough that even she believed him. But she only wanted his knowledge, and maybe she could finally, simply, stop _existing_. They would talk, and he wouldn't listen but she would _know_. 

_Now I’m ready for the last hoorah  
Dying like a shooting star_

It burned, the first feeling of anything but void she'd had in, was it years? Years were so meaningless. But it burned and it hurt, but it also was warmth. Lucrecia knew that it was something that he did, that Sephiroth did, but she was joyful. They were burning the whole world and she was laughing so hard that she was crying. 

They would talk, and she would finally introduce herself as she truly was to him. The reflections were melting away. And Lucrecia had survived undeath long enough to finally meet her son.


	5. Homewrecker

So, here's the cliche: she was seventeen and dating an older married man that promised he'd leave his wife for her. Classic, right? Daryl thought it was a clear ride out of a backwater town, up until the point he put her up as collateral for a card game in a classy Jidoor establishment that proved anything but.

What's not cliche: how the man that won her lost more than just his pride.

\---

_Every boyfriend is the one_   
_Until otherwise proven_   
_The good are never easy_   
_The easy never good_   
_And love it never happens like you think it really should_

\---

"Where are you from?"

"Nowhere particularly interesting."

Daryl had aged up quickly, which for a lot of girls back home was a double-edged sword. Only difference was that she had figured out how not to fall on said weapon. Most men she'd met liked youth until they got her alone--then they expected her to be a woman. Of course, they hadn't realized her good for nothing father had been a blacksmith with a trade in the _sharp_.

"So where are you going?"

The funny thing about men was that they always assumed things until contradicting evidence was shoved in their face. Throughout the card game she'd been flirtatious but meek, weighing the options around her. Someone might assume that she had been angling to be won--but that had been a surprise.

"Anywhere but where I was. Whole lot of world out there, don't you think?"

Any moment the gambler was going to come to and find her. Daryl had to work fast--the pitcher had just been a heavy enough metal. Really she'd been lucky that he felt himself a _charmer_ with his close-brimmed hat and use of 'milady'. This airship captain was the only one not currently getting drunk as all heck at the dock. Something about his sober manner suggested that honesty would work best with him. Cold reads were always one of her talents.

"What do you know about maintaining an airship?"

"Next to nothing. But I have a gift with metal, and if yours is worth anything I can learn."

She couldn't help but fidget a little bit. Lesson learned; romance was for suckers. Maybe adventure would be more kind?

"You get in the way and I leave you at a port. Deal?"

"Deal."

There was the slightest crinkle around his eyes, and what could have been the traces of washed off eyeliner. But she couldn't be sure.

"My name's Daryl."

"You can call me Gogo."

\---

_Deception and perfection are wonderful traits_   
_One will breed love_   
_The other hate_   
_You'll find me in the lonely hearts_   
_Under 'I'm after a brand new start'_

\---

Gogo turned out to not be a ship captain. Or a man. It had taken Daryl months and five different ports to realize her companion had stolen the ship on a lark. It had taken even longer to realize they were an artist of identity confusion and absorbed skills like a sponge.

They were the most _awesome_ teacher.

"Where are _you_ from?"

Daryl had taken a while to understand moving machinery. Materials made sense, but when they became components and then systems it was frankly a lot to swallow. But thankfully Gogo's manner meant that they never lost their temper when she was beating on a boiler with a wrench. Merely raised their eyebrow and told her to try it again.

"I was wondering when you'd start asking questions about me."

"Well you have to admit that most people don't steal airships just to go places to pretend to be people and pick up runaway teenagers and teach them how to run the mechanics. Clearly you have to come from somewhere interesting to... to _exist._ "

They laughed. "Maybe I just figured we were very similar."

"How?"

"I alter my appearance to suit the mood, you alter your manner. And perhaps we're both running from something that may or may not actually exist."

"Poverty and horrible parenting totally exist. And don't forget douchebags."

"But to still be running?"

She wanted to have an answer for that. But cleverness only went so far without experience. And for all that she had done and experienced thus far, how much more had Gogo done?

\---

_Girls and their curls and their gourmet vomit_   
_Boys and their toys and their six inch rockets_   
_We're all very lovely 'til we get to know each other_   
_As we stop becoming friends and we start becoming lovers_

\---

While Daryl had maimed people several times in their adventures--her talent for attracting trouble was only matched by her ability to get out of it--the first fatality had been a bit of a surprise. It had been _easy_ and she'd felt. She'd felt powerful. As powerful as the first time that Gogo had let her pilot their third airship. Twenty-five and _invincible._

"Daryl, why is there a dead body on our ship?"

"Maybe I'm a pirate now. Or. Well. It was an accident?"

Gogo didn't tend to have much more emotion than wry amusement, patience, and concentration when they weren't mimicking someone else. Daryl didn't know if it was fear or pride or something else in their voice and posture.

She put a hand on their arm. "Gogo, it'll be fine. It won't come back to us, right? I'll make sure of it."

Gogo flinched.

"Clean it up, and we'll depart immediately."

In the tenseness of their shoulders and the downturn of their currently lipsticked mouth Daryl for the first time realized she hadn't ever asked the right questions of her friend. That words couldn't properly convey the complexity of their person. Daryl might never actually _know_ them unless she learned how to ask.

She stepped over the dead body and grabbed one of the many scarves that Gogo added to their person when relaxed and asked with her lips.

\---

_I'm only happy when I'm on the run_   
_I break a million hearts just for fun_   
_I don't belong to anyone_

_I guess you could say that my life's a mess_   
_But I'm still looking pretty in this dress_   
_I'm the image of deception_

\---

"I figured that if we were going to be proper pirates we should actually have our own ship."

"You mean your own ship."

Daryl had managed to avoid any more direct deaths at her hands for the past year or so. Gogo hadn't exactly judged her for the violence, but hadn't exactly approved of it. It wasn't bloodlust if she didn't seek it out, right? Subterfuge would only go so far in this world, and as much a talent as Gogo had for blending in she had an equal one for standing out.

"You're going to leave now that things have gotten interesting?"

"You mean complicated. You take everything so casually."

"You're one to talk."

What Daryl wanted to say couldn't be said, and the _Falcon_ was calling to her. Neither she nor Gogo were going to settle into anything, and she had long since ignored the voice that believed in _forever_ since that first man, his name and face forgotten long ago.

"This impasse--"

She traced their face with her hands. Gogo could fool the eyes, but they could never fool her hands. Maybe Daryl wanted to memorize the small shred of proof of who they were buried under all the layers.

"Daryl."

"I know. You know I'm going to have to learn all over how to talk to someone? You've really ruined me for normal conversation."

They kissed her hand. "I'm sure you'll make such spectacular ruins in the future."

\---

_When everything is life and death_   
_You may feel like there's nothing left_   
_Instead of love and trust and laughter_   
_What you get is happy never after_   
_But deep down all you want is love_   
_The pure kind we all dream of_   
_But we cannot escape the past_   
_So you and I will never last_

\---

She technically won him in a card game--but all she'd been aiming for was his ship. Daryl had always wanted a fleet. He affected the accent of someone much richer than he'd ever been and liked _opera_ of all idiotically pretentious things.

"Since I can't exactly fly two airships at once, you get to stay with, what did you call it, the _Blackjack?_. You get in my way and I'll replace you at the nearest port. Deal?"

"Deal."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Accidentally Daryl/Gogo, whoops. And yes I spell it Daryl, not Darill.


End file.
